


House's Gamble

by Missy



Category: Army of Darkness (1992), Evil Dead (Movies), Evil Dead - All Media Types
Genre: Castles, F/M, Marriage, One Night Stands, Plot Twist, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 10:36:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sheila tries to memorize Ash’s face during their night together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	House's Gamble

**Author's Note:**

> written for cottoncandy_bingo: prompt: memorize. Thanks to Amadi for beta!

It was a night too hot for sleeping. The blankets lay stitched up in a corner, waiting for someone to pick them up again; she lay over the sheets like a ghost, her palms pressed flat against the sheets. 

Too hot for her to even think about sleeping, but he lay sprawled on his back, mouth wide open, eyes screwed tightly shut, praying viciously to some god for relief. 

Sheila knew the way he came to this pain, but she also knew the way he had defeated it. She rolled herself sideways and watched him sleep. A sudden thirst struck her, to remember every inch of his body as it was now – as it may never be again, she thought with a shiver.

He was built, she thought – like a woman staring adoringly at Apollo, like a love-struck angel fallen to earth – like the loveliest statue in a cloister. Sheila’s sole experience with nude men had been in bathing her father’s men when they came back to battle, a holy task a lady was patently unsuited for – all of them had been detumescent and deliberately detached from her firm handling. Aside from statues of a lambent and agony filled Christ on the cross, Sheila’s eyes had been otherwise virgin. Her body and lips likewise. 

Until this man.

She watched his chest rise and fall and outlined the slim lines of scars that marred his poor face. What beast had hurt him? What had dug its teeth into his heart and made him bleed so, and held on to poison his angry heart? The cuts and tears on his face were jagged, as if cut with pieces of stained glass. It was truly as if he had been ripped from the stained glass walls, lit up with agony, lit up with life. 

She fashioned his sculpted muscles with the greedy eyes. Those fingers had touched her, had held her, and those lips had tasted her and oh, she was certainly bound for hell, but she could not stop herself from touching his face one more time, so that the textures would remain a part of her soul.

Those hands reached out to enfold her, and Sheila could do little but roll against his skin in spite of the heat, shutting out the fear of tomorrow with ecstasy.

*** 

Years later, he steps up behind her and presses his skin to hers in a familiar but unrepentantly roguish way. “I knew you were watching me, that night in the castle.”

“Oh,” she said, laughing quietly. “I hath never thought of that time since.” 

“You might not think about it,” he said, and then she heard the obvious song of a zipper being lowered. “But I know you do. Now come back to bed,” he demanded, spinning around, deliberately giving her a show. “And if you’re real good to me, I’ll let you squeeze my boomstick.”

She had no need of memory now, when the fact of him lay beside her. “Why would I wish to do so?” she wondered. “It has a hair trigger.”

He was already stripping off his pants as he launched himself onto the bed. “After five years you don’t recognize an old wives’ tale when you see it, doll? Get your knees around my hips and I’ll getcha there.”

“Aye?” she asked, approaching the bed. 

“Bet me,” he said, as she lowered herself to him. 

But theirs was a house that didn’t need to gamble.


End file.
